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Sunday, October 20, 2013

The Narrative Narrative (Part 1)

Narrative seems to be one of
those words that’s really caught on in recent years. No opinion on politics or
society seems complete without at least some comment on the “narrative” that we/them
have built/are building/will build.

This thought actually struck me
as I sat at the Lahore Literary Festival held in the city in February (yes,
this is the average time it takes me to get a thought down on metaphorical
paper). So, as I sat through my third
session where speakers spoke at length about the issue of the narrative in
Pakistan, I found myself somewhat irritated by the fact that the conversations
seemed stuck well within the confines of “the narrative”.

To be fair, this third talk was
titled “National Narrative” so I don’t know what I was expecting. A small
disclaimer, perhaps, that while we discuss these things, listeners should bear
in mind other socio-economics factors that may have contributed to the events
we are discussing. Besides, talks before and after that did not contain the
word narrative in their title, and seemed equally fixated with the idea.

“But, you idiot,” I hear you
exclaim, “it was a literary festival, of course they were going to focus on
narratives”. And quite right you are, imaginary reader, and here exactly, is
where one of the several problems lies. Bear with me.

Of course, since then, I kept a
look out for the appearance of narratives and their explanations. Sure enough, from
the mainlands of English newspapers to the coastal regions of Twitter, everybody
and their uncle was going off about narrative this and narrative that.

I think there are several reasons
for this trend, mostly driven by the explosive growth in the independent media
in the country and a lack of trained specialists. Allow me to take you through
them one by one.

Let’s take the Literary Festival
example to begin with. Let me get into my bullet-proof tank, drive to a safe
distance, pull out my megaphone, and humbly suggest that there is some level of
personal ego-massaging and self-aggrandisement going on here. After all, who
are these people who treat narratives like atomic energy; beneficial in the
right hands, devastating in the wrong ones? These Op-Ed writers and “social
commentators” are exactly the same people involved in the framing of said narratives.
So, it comes as no surprise that they think and suggest that this is the most
crucial job in the world. It’s sort of like, if the guy who cleaned the Apollo
11 rocket before launch, told you that had the windshield not been
cleaned properly, there would have been no moon-landing! That may be true, but
it’s far from the whole story. Furthermore, the importance of the narrative
does lie somewhat with how much importance society gives it. So simply by
saying it’s important, it becomes important!

The second reason narratives are
in vogue is also fairly closely related to the one given above. The sheer
convenience for lazy pseudo-intellectuals, such as me (specifically the ones who
write about unquantifiable, vague topics such as narratives) is immense. Had I
been writing about more earthy topics, such as, say, scientific developments or
economics, I might have had to actually go through troves of literature and data
to be able to back up my opinions with solid report-based facts. I would be
open to attack by anyone who understood the subject, and would run the risk of
being objectively proved wrong. For example, if I were to say that people were
growing poorer in the 70s, I would either have to quote some figures, or run
the risk of someone else doing so and proving me wrong.

On the other hand, if I were to
say, people grew more intolerant in the 70s, I need not bother with any of
that. Opinion, and even better, opinion dressed up as history, has the dual
advantage of sounding profound, and being fairly unchallengeable. It serves,
therefore, as a benign hobby-horse that will neither buck nor rear.

In fact, the simplistic arguments
involved in discussing narratives means that everybody can have a good time throwing
around terms like “leftist” or “right-wing ideology” or “democratic principles”
or any other such term without the inconvenience of having to actually define
or understand them. In the eyes of the narrative, we are all equal!

Moving on, another major reason discussions
on narratives are doing the rounds is that they are easy to digest. Without
offending the sensibilities of the reader, these writers are able to provide a
nicely packaged, one-stop explanation for everything that has gone wrong with
the country. The fault lies with everyone who propagated the narrative and
everyone who follows it. It is unlikely that you are responsible for
propagating the narrative. Furthermore, by reading said article/blog/tweet you
have proved that you are a shrewd, intellectual, tolerant, humane, politically
savvy Man-of-the-world. You, dear reader, are A-OK! You're on the inside track. It’s all these other morons
around you who keep buying into this nonsense; they have let us all down. We
must either fight them or rescue them from their own stupidity.

This feeds quite well off the
fact that media outlets are also incentivised not to hire experts or worry about
their aptitude in their specific fields. All they need are people who have the
skill of holding an opinion (any opinion, really), and the ability to dress up
said opinions and present them.

By the way, a glaring result of
this was the whole Agha Waqar water-car story. For once, news channels were
faced with a story where their masterly powers of storytelling were of no use. The
science was either solid or it wasn't! Finding out which required some basic
understanding of science coupled with a bit of reading up on the specific
issues at hand. Not being equipped with the faculties required for either, news
channels decided to treat the story in their traditional manner. They decided
to call everyone on television and “talk it out” until they reached a
conclusion. The result, of course, was that a story that should not have made
it past a preliminary vetting phase became a national phenomenon. Week after
week, scientists such as Dr. Atta-ur-Rehman spluttered in disbelief as they sat
across Agha Waqar (science’s answer to the “social commentator”) who sat convincingly
spouting nonsensical terms, while anchors cluelessly nodded at both with equal
reverence. The one thing that kept Agha Waqar going was the fact that news
media turned him into a narrative story as well – the poor untrained science
genius who was going to solve everyone’s energy problems by sticking it to the
oil companies!

Right about now, even I am
growing tired of this topic. I can only imagine the amount of blood oozing out
of your eyes. So let me leave the conclusions for my next post, while
all one of you who made it thus far digest what I am trying to say.

I picked up this topic because of the harm I think
this over-emphasis on the narrative does (notice that I don’t need to back up
either this or the coming assessment). Part
deux will deal with exactly what harm I am referring to.